Just then, a large dragonfly zipped past Uncle Ned’s head.
One Purple Martin spied the dragonfly and zoomed after it.
Swoosh!
The bird swooped past Uncle Ned’s right ear.
Swoosh!
The other Purple Martin zoomed past Uncle Ned’s left ear. They fluttered and tumbled through the air like acrobats. Just as Beau’s fingertips touched the tip of Uncle Ned’s shoe, the dragonfly landed on Uncle Ned’s nose.
“HELP!” cried Uncle Ned, dropping the helmet and slapping at his face.
The helmet crashed to the ground. The green balls hit the steamy-hot asphalt and bounced in every direction.
Boing! Boing! Boing!
The lemurs, monkeys, and ostrich chased the balls right into the crowd. People shrieked and eeeeked! It was chaos!
Ada, Iggy, and Rosie watched in horror as Uncle Ned popped higher into the air out of Beau’s reach.
“Heeeeeeeelp!” he yelled. “Do something!”
The tennis balls bounced like gas molecules spreading out in every direction! Just like the molecules that spread out from Arthur’s hot, stinky shoe.
Ada remembered her experiment and what she had learned. The hot shoe was stinkier than the cold one. At least, the stink of it had reached Ada faster than the stink of the cold shoe. That meant that the hot air molecules spread faster than the cold air molecules.
Ada quickly flipped open her notes. There it was! The answer to the problem!
Ada looked at the hot, black asphalt down below Uncle Ned. The surface sizzled and heated the air above it, which rose in gentle waves. Stinky, nose-burning, asphalt-reeking waves. And that is when Ada Marie Twist knew exactly what to do.
There was no time to lose!
